This paper introduces a matching model of credit and exchange in which potentiel difficulties in the enforcement of contracts play a central role. The repeated games framework that is developed is used to analyze the pricing and availability of credit, the consequences of information monopoly in...

This paper investigates necessary conditions for an equilibrium to exist on a reinsurance market with short sale constraints. It establishes that, equilibrium, there exists an equivalent probability measure under which the reinsurance premium is the compensator of the jump process describing the...

Computable general equilibrium (CGE) models are among the most influential tools in applied economics. However, some serious questions have been raised about the empirical validity of these models. The core of the critique is that the parameter selection criteria are unsound and the use of...

This paper gives an assessment of the relative strengths and weaknesses of a variety of economic approaches commonly used for cost estimates for limiting CO2 emissions, including the ad nod approach, the dynamic optimization approach, the input-output approach, the macroeconomic approach, the...

This paper discusses how a consistent treatment of asset markets may be integrated into standard trade-focussed CGE models. Starting from a core specification of the real economy, calibrated to data for Zambia in the mid-1990s, the paper examines the properties of a hierarchy of models which...

We argue that the U.S. personal saving rate’s long stability (from the 1960s through the early 1980s), subsequent steady decline (1980s - 2007), and recent substantial increase (2008 - 2011) can all be interpreted using a parsimonious ‘buffer stock’ model of optimal...

This paper develops a framework for the quantitative analysis of individual income dynamics, mobility and welfare. Individual income is assumed to follow a stochastic process with two (unobserved) components, an i.i.d. component representing measurement error or transitory income shocks and an...

This paper studies how fiscal policy affects loan market conditions in the US. First, it conducts a Structural Vector-Autoregression analysis showing that the bank spread responds negatively to an expansionary government spending shock, while lending increases. Second, it illustrates that these...

Botswana, Lesotho, Namibia, and Swaziland face the serious challenge of adjusting not only to lower Southern Africa Customs Union (SACU) transfers because of the global economic crisis, but also to a potential further decline over the medium term. This paper assesses options for the design of...